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Letter
Ghrelin and Helicobacter pylori
  1. C D R Murray1,
  2. A V Emmanuel1
  1. 1St Mark’s Hospital, Watford Road, Harrow, Middlesex, UK
  1. Correspondence to:
    Dr C D R Murray;
    charlie.murraytalk21.com

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    We read with interest the article by Nwokolo et al reporting raised serum ghrelin levels following Helicobacter pylori eradication (Gut 2003;52:637–40). There are some exceptions to the interpretation of the data that we would take.

    The authors state that the increase in ghrelin levels seen in their study “lends support to the view that ghrelin could be involved in the long term regulation of body weight”. While there is growing evidence to support this in the literature,1–3 this study does not present any such data and is not methodologically geared towards addressing this question. The proposal that eradication of H pylori leads to an increase in ghrelin levels, which in turn leads to an increase in obesity, is also without foundation. The only known situation in which hyper-ghrelinaemia is associated with obesity is in Prader-Willi syndrome.4 In all other studies ghrelin levels correlate inversely with measures of body adiposity, and are altered in a …

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